


Wasting Time

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Series: Infinity War Fix It [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 06:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15407490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: It doesn't take much to convince Jane to help.





	Wasting Time

**Author's Note:**

> Real Life continues to be super hectic, but I haven't forgotten about this series! I am absolutely going to finish it before Avengers 4 comes out. ::shakes fist at the universe::

Jane Foster had been in Sweden when the world ended, and appeared lost when Thor, Valkyrie and Rocket found her in one of the grand conference rooms in Wakanda. Erik Selvig and Darcy Lewis had turned to ash right in front of her. She had remained in Sweden mostly because she hadn't known what else to do. She'd been pulled in to do triage work, much as Pepper had been in New York and the Avengers had in Wakanda. Thor's step faltered when he saw her, hair pulled back and disheveled, dark circles under her eyes. She was in jeans and a battered looking plaid shirt open over a plain gray T shirt, clipboard with pen in hands as if she had been taking notes on something before directed to the conference room.

"C'mon, big guy," Rocket said, nudging him. "Go talk to her. We need her, remember?"

Thor didn't sigh exactly, but did approach her cautiously. "Hello, Jane."

She looked up at him from her clipboard, confused at first, but then her eyes widened. "Thor."

"Yes," he murmured sheepishly. "I'm glad that you survived, Jane. The world would be a much poorer place without you in it."

Her smile was a thin, wan thing, more like a grimace. "Yeah, well. The world's in a pretty shitty state right now. What do you want?"

His expression fell at her harsh tone. "Jane..."

She tucked the clipboard under an arm and held up a hand. "Sorry, that came out wrong."

"But likely no less than I deserve," Thor said softly, dropping his gaze to the floor.

"Look, I get it. You have worlds to save and a whole other realm to run. It was pretty clear that I'm never going to be first for you. That's fine, and I'm not actually mad about that." She threw up her hands in frustration, forgetting about the clipboard until it clattered on the floor. Letting out a huff, she shook her head and left it. "It's that I put my life on hold for you."

"I never asked you to."

"I know. And honestly? That's even worse. I never wanted to be one of those women that dropped everything for a man. But I did, sort of. I put my life on hold waiting for you. Then you came back, no explanations, no apologies, just a request for help. It nearly killed me, and I'm not prepared for that." She held up a hand to forestall his interrupting. "Not your fault, I don't blame you for that."

"I blame myself," Thor said heavily.

"This isn't about you!" Jane cried in exasperation. "That's what I'm trying to say. This is about me. It's _me,_ and I don't like that I bent over backward and dropped everything to be with you."

"Jane, I care about you and your well being."

"And that's great, thanks. But _I_ need to care about _me,_ too."

"You got your Nobel Prize."

That threw her for a moment. "You kept track?"

"Of course. I like knowing of your glories and that you're safe. My travels haven't always been."

She deflated a bit, wind taken out of her sails. "I broke things off with you because our lives were too different. And I didn't like who I was becoming when you weren't around."

Thor definitely had the look of a kicked puppy about him, and Jane visibly hesitated before touching his arm. "It wasn't anything you did, Thor. I liked how it was was when we were together. Talking about space and physics and how our mythology lined up with science. I just... disappeared afterward, and I'd never been that way before."

He took her hand and kissed the back of her fingers, much as he'd done in Puente Antiguo years ago. It had charmed her then and it charmed her still.

"Asgard has been destroyed, and I don't know yet where our new homeland will be. But if ever I may help you, even to talk of the stars," he said with a sad, soulful smile, "I will be here for you. However you want me, I will be here."

Jane gave him a watery smile. "And that right there, that's the part of you that I love."

Valkyrie cleared her throat and managed not to look nearly as impatient as she obviously felt. "Is the emotional mess cleaned up, or do you need more time?"

When Thor looked to Jane for her lead, she sputtered a bit, then nodded. "I think so."

"Damn. I thought I'd be able to get more to drink," she grumbled, shaking her head in an irritated way and shoving a flask back into her pocket.

"We'll have to brew our own," Rocket decided. "Everything on this flarking planet is pathetically weak."

Jane did a double take when she finally noticed Rocket. "And who are you?"

Thor sighed heavily. "We have quite a tale to tell."

***

The four eventually went to the lab in Sweden where Jane had been working prior to Thanos' snap. It was all state of the art supercomputers to run her calculations and the simulations based on data she fed it from various observatories around the world. It had crunched data from all of the aliens that had appeared looking for the stones, trying to find a point of origin.

"Impressive," Rocket muttered, hopping up onto a table to inspect the main computer. "This is almost modern."

"If you're going to insult me with that, don't bother. I just need them to run the sims, I don't program them. Or know how to program them."

Rocket sighed and poked at the keyboard with one of his claws. "It's not bad, just old."

"This is better than most equipment I used to work with. Or I built my own sensors."

That got him alert and excited. "That part definitely sounds like fun." He looked over at Thor. "Lightning Bug, you are _definitely_ a dumbass."

Valkyrie smirked as Thor merely sighed. "I think you've already established that several times."

Jane frowned at Thor. "These are your friends?"

He rubbed the back of his head a little, and shrugged. "Allies, definitely."

"You wound me, Lightning Bug," Rocket grumbled. "Here I thought we had a connection." He laughed at Thor's discomfited expression, but Valkyrie only rolled her eyes and strode to the windows. "Don't tell me, you think we're going to be attacked in some egghead's lab."

"I think it's best to be prudent," Valkyrie said, back to Rocket as she surveyed the section of the street that she could see from the window. "We arrived in a space ship, and this is a planet that feels under siege. Let's not discount the theory that some brave soul will take it into their minds that _we're_ the ones that caused this devastation."

Rocket blinked. "And I thought I was the paranoid one," he muttered, shaking his head a little.

Jane sighed. "Anyway, you said you were having trouble with the navigation."

"Right. Some of the computers were damaged with the journey made to Earth, some with battle, and we aren't entirely sure how to manually do the calculations."

"You want me to be your computer," Jane said flatly.

Thor had the grace to wince. "Not exactly."

"Then what?"

"If you agree, we'd like to bring you into the stars. Show you the galaxy and maybe the entire universe. You would have to make sure that the navigation computers are actually correct when the jumps are made, and we would be following the course you set."

She blinked slowly and crossed her arms over her chest. "So. You want to do interplanetary space travel. Via what sounds like Einstein-Rosen bridges. Your computers are shot and can't do the math, so you need me to do it or else the gravitational pull will rip you apart."

He winced again. "I have Stormbreaker to open bridges, but they wouldn't be large enough for a fleet."

"You're having me navigationally command a fleet of ships?"

"Yes?"

Jane let out a burst of hysterical laughter and uncrossed her arms to cover her mouth with one hand while reaching over to grasp the back of a chair with her other. She leaned on it heavily, sucking in a deep breath while Thor and Rocket looked on in concern.

"You should have started with that line in the conference room," Jane declared with a grin.

***

It was odd to be left out of the conversation, but Jane and Rocket actually got along fairly well when they were discussing space travel. He didn't bother going over the computer systems or code, and seemed amused by her fascination with the logistics of space travel. Thor should have been happy about that, that Jane seemed to be taking in this new information fairly well. Some part of him missed their talks under the stars in New Mexico, but he'd never enjoyed astronavigation classes and had only studied the topic enough to pass, not to do the computations himself.

"Jealous?" Valkyrie asked, taking a swig of something out of her flask. Jane had introduced her to some of the locals she was staying with, and a pair of the women had said something about clubs. Thor wanted to feel jealous about that, too, on some level, but couldn't muster enough emotion to care.

"Maybe?" he answered. "Right now, I feel a lot of nothing."

"That's how the rest of us feel most of the time," Valkyrie replied with false cheer. She shot him an intentionally innocent look at his dubious expression. "I suggest you take up alcohol. I found lots and lots of it here. Those ladies were quite accommodating last night."

Thor ignored the leer in her expression and sighed. "She's made a name for herself, you know. Brilliant mind, wonderful personality, beautiful. I can't ruin that for her."

"She's also a grown woman," Valkyrie reminded him. "If she wants an adventure, honor her choice."

"She hated who she was when I wasn't there."

"That's what got you in a twist," Valkyrie said, staring at him incredulously. "She didn't say she hated you, remember? Or that she hated how you were when together. It means you can't just skip off without saying anything. It means you have to honor what you tell her or risk losing it all."

"I thought I did," he murmured in a quiet voice. "But I've hurt her anyway."

Valkyrie rolled her eyes. "Don't be a royal ninny. Open your mouth and _talk._ She's right there, she's going to help us, and she's got spirit to fight. Let her. She makes her choices, and either you support them and help her do it properly or get the hell out of her way."

Thor looked at her askance. "You are a very unconventional advisor."

"Yeah, well, life happened," she replied in a droll voice. "So what are you going to do about it?"

Jane was sketching something on a piece of paper in front of her and comparing it to the computer model that was running beside Rocket. The sense of wonder and excitement added a sparkle to her eyes, and Thor longed to see that directed at him again.

"What if I make a mistake?" Thor asked quietly, staring at her. "What if I make it worse?"

"Then put on your big boy pants and fix it." Valkyrie's stern voice softened and she actually touched his wrist gently. "She's still alive, Thor. You're alive. Don't waste the time you have. One year, ten, ten hundred, it doesn't matter. Every moment is precious."

He smiled endearingly at her, one of those sunny smiles that were all too rare these days. "Thank you."

As Thor approached, Jane looked up. That excited sparkle was there, and didn't dim when she saw him. She even smiled wider, and he found himself answering her smile. "Hey. There's definitely a way to stabilize the jumps between bridges, maybe a way to make them a little longer between jumps. I have a lot of data that we collected all over the world, so I probably can extrapolate back and find a point of origin. Especially when the plotting actually means something now, and I can see what it's referring to."

"The star map, you mean?"

"Such as it is. It looks really incomplete, because we need mass and gravitational data for me to figure out where the pull is going to be in space. That's how we can make the jumps longer, by using the gravitational pull of one star or planetary system to slingshot the ship off in the proper direction, giving a little more momentum and energy as it goes."

Sitting down on Jane's other side, he couldn't help but grin at her. Jane didn't seem discomfited by that at all, and even reached out to grasp his arm. "It shouldn't take me very long to figure this out. I feel like I'm almost halfway there already!"

"I'm pleased," Thor told her honestly. "I enjoy seeing you happy."

"I'm outta here!" Rocket chirped. "I can tell when three's a crowd!"

Jane blinked in surprise. "But-"

"Finland seems to have some space that they are willing to have Asgardians settle on," Thor said quietly. "We are a people less numerous than before, and there will need to be day to day decisions to be made. I know that I will be busy, but I never want you to feel as though you're second best. That you don't matter to me. Because you do, and I would never want to see you unhappy."

"It's... probably best that we don't do anything right away. Emotions running high, and all that."

Thor leaned in, and she tilted her head back, expecting to be kissed. She frowned when he didn't right away, and shot him a questioning look. "I will wait for as long as it takes until you're able to be comfortable with the idea of us again. Of perhaps being Queen of New Asgard."

Her mouth dropped open. "What? What did you say?"

"I won't press," Thor continued earnestly. "But in my heart, I know that you would be a wonderful Queen, and an excellent Allmother."

"That's a lot to process," she temporized.

Instead of kissing her mouth, he tilted his chin up to kiss her forehead. "Take as much time as you need. If you choose to be with me again, I will do better. I will do it the right way for you."

"You make it really hard to stay mad at you."

He grinned at her unabashedly. "Thank you."

"But if you're not going to help me with the math, then you need to go," she said sternly. "Saving the universe first, then figuring out what's going on between us."

"Agreed." Thor continued grinning even as he leaned back. "I remember some of the stars, and I can annotate your map with the names of planets and landmarks. Is that agreeable?"

Jane nodded and bit her lip a little uncertainly. "Thor? I am glad you're here."

Pulling her into a tight hug, he kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes so he wouldn't cry. "With so much loss everywhere, I am happy to help you." He tightened his grip fractionally. "I won't disappear this time, I promise."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," she replied, voice shaking as she tightened her hold on him as well. "I don't think I could handle that."

"I'm done wasting time and holding onto old hurts. I'm trying to be a better man, and not just for you. Too much has been lost. I'm sorry I couldn't be what you needed me to be. This promise I can keep. I won't disappear. I won't just leave without a word."

Jane relaxed a bit into his hug. "Okay. Okay, then." She pulled back and gave him a weary smile. "Let's go calculate the route you need to take."


End file.
